Far From Paradise
by puppyblue
Summary: This wasn't what either of them wanted, but maybe it couldn't have ended any other way. Gen; Sole Survivor and Father (Spoilers for the main quest and the Nuclear Option)


He hadn't thought it would come to this.

 _Just…leave me._

It had been almost as much a plea as an order and he'd turned away from her to hide that fact, fixing his eyes on the far wall and ignoring her presence until she complied. She moved to his terminal instead, the cheerful beep alerting him when she entered the system.

The keyboard outlined her activities, each click harsh and resonant in the frozen silence between them. The last few taps sent the evacuation alarm blaring, summoning the Institute's residents away from the only home they'd ever known and something in him eased just slightly with relief. Then the chair scraped against the floor as she stood and he tracked her breathing, the wounded wheeze at the end of each exhale as she crossed the room to stand next to him again. He thought for a moment that she might attempt to speak with him again and he braced himself to hear her, gritting his teeth.

She didn't say anything. There was the slightest rustle of cloth, a miniscule weight resting on the bed for a moment as she placed something by his side. And then his mother left, filthy boots silent against the reflective Institute floor. She didn't look back. Ashamed, most likely, and rightly so. He looked down.

She'd left him a holotape.

Something almost resembling a smile curled the corner of his mouth, unamused and harsh. It seemed even in this they showed some similarity of mind, even if said similarity hadn't been enough to turn her from her destructive course.

He had the sudden, vengeful urge to cast it away from him, shatter it against the walls so he never had to hear her voice again. It was the thought of his own tape, tucked quickly and carefully into the hands of the synth – the _boy_ – that stayed the impulse. There was no guarantee she would even choose to play it, but he was reasonably certain that curiosity, at least, would drive her to listen. Again, it seemed she'd gambled the same. And correctly, at that. What exactly could she have left to say to the son she'd betrayed?

He lifted it gingerly in one hand. It was old and worn, dusty with the filth of the Commonwealth and blunted at the corners as though it had knocked against every solid object in her pack for months on end. Blue ink delineated a title along a strip of white on the casing, but it had long since worn too faint to read.

Raising himself out of the bed left him breathless and aching, and by the time he reached his terminal, he was trembling with the exertion, his chest drawing tight around his lungs as blood pounded behind his eyes. He eyed the holotape balefully, but slipped it into the terminal regardless, triggering it to play with slightly more force than necessary.

Instead of her voice, a squeal of feedback tore through the speakers, making him flinch. Before he could force the tape to stop though, the noise resolved into a voice.

" _Oops, haha. Keep those little fingers away... Ah, there we go."_

It was a man's voice, interspersed with the babbling and high-pitched giggles of an excited baby. His brow furrowed, confusion and irritation rising. What did this have to do with the matter at hand?

" _Hi honey! Listen, I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are…but we're going to anyway!_ "

Oh. _Shaun and I_. That wasn't just any baby giggling – that was _him_. His younger self, before…everything.

" _…kind, and loving…and funny!_ "

And this was his father speaking. It was an unfamiliar voice, a bit lighter than his own and ringing with a far different accent, but he thought he could pick out a few similarities now that he was listening for it. It was…odd. He'd never much considered what his father had sounded like. There simply hadn't been any point. And yet, now he knew, from a holotape that had to be over two hundred years old.

It felt…he didn't know, really. Perhaps odd was simply the best word.

" _Look, with Shaun and us all being home together, it's been an amazing year. But even so, I know our best days are yet to come._ "

There didn't seem to be anything important on here, just a husband flattering his wife in the way that couples so often did. Perhaps it had been a comfort to her as she learned the Commonwealth, one last token of her old life that she could pull out and listen to late at night. But now, she had given it to him.

" _There will be changes sure, things we'll need to adjust to…_ "

Why? What was the _point_ of giving him this? What was she hoping to accomplish?

" _…but everything we do, no matter how hard, we do it for our family."_

That last sentence was an unexpected sting, because his so-called family had just turned her back on him to finish her mission of destroying his life's work. He clenched his teeth and swallowed, but he listened through to the end, something undefinable holding him there.

 _"Now say goodbye, Shaun. Bye bye, say bye bye. Bye honey. We love you._ "

And the audio clicked off.

He sat for a moment in the silence, his chest tight, and his thoughts uncertain. He'd expected her to have recorded something personally – more useless apologies or platitudes and, if he was lucky, some kind of deeper explanation for her actions. Not _this_ , whatever it was.

Except…

…except that was his father. Nathan Henrikson, dead over sixty years now, by rights nothing more than a ghost of the distant past. The same past his mother had stepped straight out of so very recently, the loss of her infant and her husband a wound still fresh on her soul.

 _This_ was her reason, her explanation. Whatever other values and motives she was acting on, this was the core of the issue.

He'd known she still suffered from the pain of the Institute's actions all those years ago, had acknowledged it during their first meeting. He'd explained the circumstances, the intent behind the actions, and had proceeded to reveal all the scientific benefits that had resulted from the use of his DNA. It had been more explanation that any outside the Institute – and most inside the Institute – had ever received.

He'd known, even then, that it might be their one stumbling block. Her misplaced sympathy towards synths could so easily be proven unnecessary given further exposure to them. Her incomprehensible attachment to the Commonwealth could be worn down with more time spent among the brilliant minds of the Institute. Her anger, though, had been a bright, burning thing, lashing out at him in desperation to find her son during their first meeting, before she'd known the truth.

He should have been enough – her son was what she wanted, after all, and here he was, safer and saner than he would ever have been had he been raised out in the Commonwealth. He'd thought that, given time and a new, brilliant purpose, that she would understand the necessity of the Institute's actions and move past her anger. He'd thought she _had_ understood. He'd been so _certain_.

But no. She couldn't see what was right in front of her, couldn't move past this ghost of a family that she'd never have again. And she blamed the Institute for all of it.

 _All the enemies you've created…you can't imagine why I'd be standing here_?

 _Perhaps I didn't think to count you among them_ , he'd told her honestly and he almost wanted to laugh now at his own naivety.

"I understand." If Shaun's voice rasped as he spoke one last time to the mother that would never hear him, it was the pain of his illness and nothing more. "I should have killed you in the Vault."

The terminal waited, patient and questioning. _Play: Hi Honey?_ He ejected the tape, tossing it away from him onto the desk. The call for evacuation still played on in the background, but the shouts of distress and the echoes of gunfire had mostly faded away. He thought about moving to the windows, considered assessing the damage already wrought on his Institute. But, really, what was the point of agonizing over it now?

And so he simply made his way, slow and painful, back to the pristine white bed at the balcony railing. _My deathbed,_ came the thought, still tinged with regret, and he scoffed to himself, though he regretted it as his chest seized in pain. He grasped the edge of the bed, easing himself back down slowly and breathing through it with the confidence of months of practice even as he cursed the entire situation in his head.

He cursed the sickness for striking him down and the doctors for failing to find a cure, and the Railroad for its very existence. He cursed his mother for her actions, for her duplicity, for allowing useless sentiment to overwhelm her common sense and doom them all in the process.

And he cursed himself most of all, for thinking that anyone not of the Institute could possibly understand its importance, for falling prey to that same sickly trap of sentiment. For hoping that…for hoping.

He should have known better.

And yet, as he laid back down one last time, waiting for the explosions and the end, he wondered. It was that same traitorous thought that had been the beginning of all this, always hovering, scratching at the back of his mind.

What if. What might have been.

 _I wish…_

* * *

Cross-posted on AO3.

This game, just...ugh. Goddammit, Shaun.


End file.
